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Widespread power outage hits downtown and midtown Detroit

DETROIT, MI – A widespread power outage affected downtown and areas of midtown Detroit. The problem started around 10:30am.

At 5:20pm power was fully restored to all of downtown and midtown Detroit. Power was not expected to be fully restored until about 7pm.

The Detroit Public Lighting Department continues to work closely with DTE Energy.

A major power cable in the old public lighting grid failed and caused many headaches for the City of Detroit.

[From Mayor Mike Duggans Facebook page]

A major cable failure occurred at the Mistersky power station at approximately 9:30 AM on the Warren Circuit. During PLD’s efforts to reconnect customers through another circuit, a breaker on the new circuit failed, which triggered a system-wide shut down at approximately 10:30 AM, resulting in loss of power to all customers on the city’s PLD grid

· 900 customer locations affected

· 740 traffic signals without power

· Police Stations without power – All up on generator except 1st precinct (Atwater Street), which has been moved to 3rd precinct

· The City never lost 911 Dispatch

· 36 Fire stations without power o Doors are all open except for Ladder 2

· 81 DPS and other schools on city grid without power

· Five of 27 circuits are back up as of 1:00 PM. DTE expects all circuits to be back up by late tonight.

· DTE is in the process of an 18-month inspection of the system. This particular piece of equipment has not failed in the past.

DTE is spending $200 million to build a new power grid in the City of Detroit. It is going to take four years to complete that build out of the new grid so they are having to deal with the old public lighting grid as they work to switch more customers over.

The Detroit Public Lighting Department isolated the issue and worked to restore the power as quickly as possible. The issue started at the Warren substation.

There were 18 Michigan State Police and 78 Detroit Police Officers directing traffic and assisting in any other necessary issues during the outage.

97 buildings were affected by the outage.

All Detroit Public Schools dismissed early at their half-day schedules.

40 buildings at Wayne State University were also affected. Wayne State University cancelled all classes on the main campus, including evening classes and events for the rest of the day. Extension Centers and online classes were not affected.

Power was fully restored to the Detroit Medical Center at about 2:15pm.

The Frank Murphy Hall of Justice ended up closing for the rest of the day. The closure put the high profile case of Bob Bashara on hold until Wednesday morning.

The People Mover was also down because it gets its power from the public lighting grid.

People had been trapped in elevators in the Coleman A. Young Municipal Building. Handicapped people were assisted by fireman to get down the stairwells to safety. No injuries have been reported at this time.

The power outages also affected street lights in great numbers.

The Detroit Institute of Arts has closed for the day. The DIA had to evacuate 900 students when the power went out. On Twitter they posted: This is what evacuating 900 student visitors looks like! #DetroitPowerOutage.

Mayor Mike Duggan has been very impressive during the crisis. One member of the media appeared to be critical that information was not being provided on a timely basis so that it could be reported out. Mayor Duggan made the statement that he would rather be an hour to an hour and half late getting information out that is accurate rather than have to explain himself for the next three to four days for mistakes.

There is very little doubt that Mayor Mike Duggan and his team have the crisis well in hand. This has to be the best management of Detroit that has been had in a decade or more.